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Thoughtful debate elevates us all. Donniel Hartman, Yossi Klein Halevi, and Elana Stein Hain revive the Jewish art of constructive discussion on topics related to political and social trends in Israel, Israel-Diaspora relations, and the collective consciousness of being Jewish. 

The podcast draws its name from the concept of machloket l’shem shemayim, “disagreeing for the sake of heaven” and is part of the Institute’s iEngage Project.

Israel at War — Independence

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Donniel: Hi, this is Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, Day 214. And our theme for today is independence.

We’re in a complicated, I think it’s one of the most overused terms, Yossi. We’re in a complicated time, and we still remain in a complicated time. There’s a very deep sense of chaos and confusion in Israeli society. Where every day, we sort of don’t know what each day is going to bring. And it’s not just the uncertainty of it. There’s also a sense that what the next day might bring might have unbelievably significant consequences for so much of this country. And so Israelis, I don’t know if they, I don’t think we even, there’s a sense of more, there’s a dull shockedness and also discomfort, fear. There’s a lot going on right now. 

Yesterday was a day in which six soldiers were killed. And normally on a day where six soldiers are killed, that shakes up the country. I think we’re so shaken up. I don’t know if we could be more shaken right now as we look to the future. Last night we started something in Rafah, but I don’t know if we know what it is we’re starting or not starting or what’s going to be. Will there be a hostage deal? There’s just so much on the table. 

And I and you, Yossi, instead of delving into that chaos, we want to take a step back. Next week, a few days after our audience will hear this podcast, we’re going to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, independence. And in today’s podcast, I’d like to do two things. The first is follow the dictate of Tal Becker, who last year had such an influence on me when he said, Donniel, you know, one day a year, I want to celebrate Israel without complicating it with our challenges and our responsibilities. 

And so the first issue we’re going to deal with today is precisely this year, this year, 2024, the 76th year, what do we feel there is to celebrate? What is there to give thanks for? In many ways, in the most uncomplicated way, but not disconnected from where we are, connected to where we are. 

And the second is that while I agree with Tal, because I’m Jewish, I can’t fully agree with him. I can’t have uncomplicated joy. I wouldn’t know what to do with uncomplicated joy. Is there some thoughts that you have and that I have about Israel and its direction as we’re celebrating Yom Haatzmaut? 

It’s also, it is a day of accounting to some extent. And so to ask, what are our hopes? And again, trying to be specific and to help all of us. You know, I’m looking forward to help the two of us and to help our audience navigate. Next week is a big day. It is Independence Day. And so our theme is, our topic is independence. 

And so Yossi, nice to be with you. 

Yossi: Great to be with you.

Donniel: Let’s start. Let’s sort of deny the complexity. Let’s deny what’s complicated. And let’s think about seriously without being trivial. What do we celebrate this independence day?

Yossi: So there are two components of independence for most countries. For Israel, there’s a third component. The first two components are self-governance, which includes the ability to shape one’s political decisions, the one’s cultural space. The second component is self-defense. The third uniquely Israeli component of independence is in gathering, the ability to bring back to our homeland any Jewish community around the world that wants to come home. 

And thinking about Tal Becker’s dictum, which, ordinarily, I would endorse wholeheartedly that there needs to be one day a year where we leave aside our anxieties, I don’t think we can do that this year. And that’s because each of the components, these components of independence are under question today. Self-governance, what we’ve seen is a growing anxiety among Israelis about the future viability of Jewish sovereignty. Self-defense collapsed on October 7th. We were completely defenseless against the weakest of our enemies. And that’s a trauma that Israelis are going to be grappling with for many years to come. 

And what I want to focus on this year and what I think I will be focusing on for myself on Independence Day is the open question of the viability of in gathering. And I don’t necessarily mean, although it’s part of it, of whether Jews are still going to feel pulled to Israel. And the irony, Donniel, you know, is I’m traveling around America and I’m hearing so much anxiety about the future of the diaspora, even in America, the future of Jews on campuses. 

And then I’m looking at the mess that we’ve created in Israel and asking why can’t we do better? Why couldn’t we have a more compelling place to invite Jews who feel that sense of not necessarily physical threat, but psychological threat, who don’t feel comfortable anymore as Jews in their societies. And so the question, the deeper question for me about the ingathering is really, are we able to make one people, one viable people out of a hundred different Jewish communities that have been brought home? 

And I’m thinking of the great Arik Einstein song, which is kind of the anthem of ingathering. It’s called the caravan song. And he has this wonderful line in there where he says, Kim’at, et ze et ze kim’at v’lo hikarno. And we almost didn’t recognize each other. In other words, we’d been in exile, not only from the land, but from each other for 2,000 years. Jews in the East and the West, we had barely had connection. And when we started coming home, we hardly recognized each other. 

And this year, I’m raising that question. Because, and I’ll just really end with this, Donniel, but with, on the one hand, we went through a year of tearing each other apart, of feeling that the basis of ingathering was unraveling. And on the other hand, since October 7th, we came together in ways that I think surprised many of us. We immediately pivoted from the most divisive moment in Israeli history to one of the peak moments of Israeli unity. And so we still, we prove to ourselves that we still have the instincts of solidarity when we need them. 

But the open question for me this Independence Day is what happens when the fighting stops? And look, we’re seeing even now with some fighting going on, we are already losing our ability to rally around the flag. And so the question for me really is what is the basis of an Israeliness, a shared Israeliness? 

And that has many questions which we deal with at Hartman. It has the questions internally, Jewish solidarity, and with 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arab.

Donniel: Yossi, I just first want to thank you for making me feel so celebratory. I’m just…

Yossi: Was that ironic, Donniel?

Donniel: Me? I don’t have an ironic bone in my body. I asked a simple question. I said, let’s, could we just have, what’s your uncomplicated joy and sense of thankfulness? I can’t wait till we get to the second half of the podcast when you have to actually talk about what do you feel the challenges are. So there, but I just want, I just on behalf of me, myself, and I to thank you for uplifting my spirit so much. This is Yossi Klein Halevi, second-gen Holocaust. This is his notion of happiness.

Yossi: You know, Donniel, this is going to be emotional consensus in Israel. This year, it’s not going to be… In the past, we were able to. We were able to dredge up that celebration. I don’t think we can do it this year.

Donniel: I know. Yeah, I know, like the mangals, the barbecues, like no one’s gonna, it’s gonna be a strange Yom Haatzmaut. But I still wanna try. And there is something that I wanna be very thankful for. And you know, again, since I’m Jewish, I don’t wanna be completely excited and happy. You can never be completely happy. But I don’t feel that our viability is in question. I don’t think our self-defense has collapsed.

What you are saying, Yossi, is something that I’ve heard thousands of times from so many Israelis. But I think this Yom Haatzmaut, in light of October 7th, it’s something that you and I spoke about in the past, I want to remember October 8th, not October 7th, because October 7th happened, but so did October 8th. And on October 8th, we stood up and we fought back. And on October 8th, the strength of our society and of our country, we’re at the fore. 

Now it’s true. As you know, I’ve said this for months, I’m not overly impressed with the way we’ve conducted the war on so many levels. It’s true, I’m not. You know, I spoke about the fact that we lacked strategy and we all, we had our tactics and that’s true. And I think today, part of the frustration is nobody has a clue where we’re going. 

But one thing is clear. There is a strength that we have created here in this country. There was a pogrom on October 7th and we stood up. You know, in this other medium, I spoke about how after the Holocaust “never again” became a prayer. Today, “never again” is a policy. Doesn’t mean it’ll always be successful, but it’s not a prayer, Yossi. It’s not a prayer. 

Now, of course it’s going to require wisdom. Wisdom that I feel is profoundly lacking from so much of our leadership. So Netanyahu could get up and declare, if necessary, we will fight alone. I was listening to him. I said, grow up. Really, you’re going to fight alone with what? Seltzer bottles? What are you fighting alone with? The newspapers are filled with certain precision bombs that aren’t being delivered now. Like, what are you talking about? With the attack of Iran, what, we fought alone? And when the war started and we needed to keep Hezbollah out, and American carrier groups came, you fought alone? And when America gave us, what is it, $14, $17 billion to reestablish and to buy the things we need. What are you fighting? What is this stupid conversation? 

But when all is said and done, leaving all of the idiocy aside, there’s still, October 7th was a trauma, but it wasn’t a Holocaust, Yossi. You know, and this week we commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. They were connected and they were associated with each other and there was a piece that I read that was just at, in our Center for Ritual, they put together this special Holocaust Memorial Day rituals. And one man who survived the Holocaust, and he writes about his victory and it was just this remarkable piece. And then he said, on October 7th, they killed two of my grandchildren. And it’s over. You know, like my heart just tore.

There are tears, but still, October 8th and 9th and 10th were powerful. I want to, on this Israel Independence Day, I’m not an October 7th Jew. I’m an October 8th Jew. October 7th is something that I have to remember, but I’m not an October 7th Jew. I’m not. I refuse to be. I refuse the victimhood of it. And I refuse to allow that one day of failure to define my Israeli experience. I refuse. 

Now, you are right. For most Israelis, it has this dominant sense. But I’m hoping that on this Yom Haatzmaut, we could connect to the vitality, power that we have. Not saying we’re doing it all right, and that’s why we need the second half of the podcast. But there’s something to remember. I’m not an October 7th Jew. And I don’t want to be.

Yossi: So, Donniel, that’s beautiful. I really appreciate what you’ve said. I also hear in what you said and what I said, our fathers speaking. This is what your father, I believe, would say for this Independence Day, and I suspect what I said is closer to what my father would have said. And what I hear you saying really are two things, and I love them both.

The first is that you insist on maintaining the traditional Israeli divide between Memorial Day and Independence Day, which is emotionally and impossible on one level. How do you go from the wrenching ceremonies of remembering everyone we lost, to hitting each other on the head with plastic hammers, in the old days when Israelis were more exuberant and more public on Independence Day? And there was always something a little frenetic about that, a little unnatural. And yet Israeli society insisted on maintaining that border. 

In recent years, it’s become a little more permeable. You have, there’s the sadness, the angst that you feel pressing against Independence Day. Today, I don’t think it’s going to be possible emotionally to completely separate. But nevertheless, what you are calling for is separating October 7th, which belongs to Memorial Day, and October 8th, which belongs to Independence Day. And I love that. And I’m going to try to adopt that personally this year. It’s a challenge. I take that as an emotional, a psychological challenge. 

The second thing that I hear you saying is that this year we need to be mindful not only of Independence Day, but “inter-dependence day.” That we are not an island and we did not return home to live as the biggest and most powerful Jewish ghetto in our history. There were two forms of return that Zionism promised the Jewish people. A return to the land and a return to the community of nations. 

And if you read the classical Zionists, from Herzl to Jabotinsky, a return to the community of nations was no less essential to their vision of sovereignty than a return to the land and a return to power. And this year with the attack from Iran, we really experienced the power of interdependence. We also experienced the opposite. We’re experiencing it every day on campuses, what it feels like to be assaulted and hated and alone and accused of the worst sins, most of which we did not commit. And so we’re living this year between a kind of ghettoization and interdependence. That’s part of the challenge.

Donniel: Right, now I could celebrate our independence despite the interdependence. And I could see the difference of when all we are is interdependent. In the past it wasn’t just even interdependent, it was dependent. 

Yossi: Nice.

Donniel: And there is a, it’s between dependency and independence. And independence, by the way, will always be interdependent. You know, and I don’t need some myth of, independence is always interdependent. It always is. But there is a sense that, listen, you know, and I’ve been saying, it’s time for us. And the minute we celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, I think we can get on to the second part of the question of asking ourselves who we want to be.

Yossi: Yeah, and I want to tie it into what you’ve just said.

Donniel: Great, Yossi. So now comes my second question, and I can’t wait to be bowled over by your optimism. But as both of us, as lovers of Israel and lovers of Zionism, and it’s so essential to who we are, we could never just be as joyful in whatever categories you and I define joyful as. But as we look forward, without doing a complete analysis of every one of the failures of Israeli society which needs to be rectified, if you have a prayer for Israel, if you have a hope on this Independence Day, other than may there be elections and may we have a new government, which, you know, you know, and a new government.

Yossi: May there be elections and may we have a new government. 

Donniel: Is there anything else? Why should I determine? What’s your prayer? What’s your hope? What do you feel we need?

Yossi: Donniel, I’m still processing independence, dependence, interdependence. And I want to unpack that a little bit because one of the great threats to Israeli independence is the distorted way in which the radical right is interpreting independence. They equate independence with “am levadad yishkon”, “you are a people that shall dwell alone,” as the Torah puts it, “and not be reckoned among the nations.” You live in “splendid isolation,” that is the exilic fantasy of independence. 

And the Zionist dream of independence was somewhere between independence and interdependence. We don’t live alone. We’re part of humanity. We’re part of the fabric of this world. We’re accountable to those parts of humanity that are engaged with us. And so I’m looking at this year, especially at the need to push back at a childish notion, an anti-Zionist notion of independence. And that’s the notion of the ghetto. 

The second thing is that the three areas of Israeli independence that I that I laid out at the beginning of our conversation can each be celebrated this year while being mindful of their fragileness. And that’s really, I think, that’s true to where I am emotionally this year, how I’m going into Independence Day. And so it’s not going to be a rousing celebration. It’s going to be a very quiet and sober celebration. 

But for example, self-governance. Self-governance and self-defense this year are, for me, overlapping. And they are both reflected in what you said. They both came into expression on October 8th. And October 8th was the moment when the entire Jewish population of Israel, virtually the entire population from left to center to right, came together and said we can’t allow the lapse back into Jewish victimhood to stand. And we negated it instantly. That was the pivot.

And the third element of Israeli sovereignty, the ingathering, recreating, trying to recreate one Jewish people out of the fragments of exile, that’s more complicated because we, again, we’ve gone through two very opposite experiences of ingathering in this last year, tearing each other apart until October 7th, and then uneasily coming back together to defend ourselves. But we proved that we still have the capacity for ingathering. And by ingathering, I’m using it now as a metaphor for taking the physical ingathering of bringing Jews home to the next level of actually creating a single society.

Donniel: So that’s, the urgency of that, the possibility, 

Yossi: Yes. The possibility.

Donniel: The possibility that was created this year and the urgency to not just do that in the immediate defense of the borders, but to be able to do that with our people around the world. Okay, that’s a worthwhile thing to,

Yossi: And internally. And first of all, within Israeli society. That’s the starting point.

Donniel: Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know, I know. You know, I had a very interesting experience that helped me think about this question that I’m asking. I have a Hebrew podcast called L’maan Hashem with our colleague Dov Elbaum. And this year we read together and learned Israel’s Declaration of Independence. And we asked each other, the question was, if we had to write it again now in 2023, after everything that we know, what is missing and what could be added and what do we need? And maybe we could have that exercise you and I together at another time.

But one of the things that came as I was studying it over and over again, I realized that the Declaration of Independence is really not a declaration. It’s a prayer. The start of Israel’s declaration establishes our identity as a people, our connection to the land of Israel, and our right to sovereignty. But then it shifts. It shifts into a declarative mode, which is really a prayer about what Israeli society should be. A prayer of a society which will have the ingathering of the exiles, which will foster peace and justice, that we’ll be a country built on equality and human rights. 

And it has within it a moment where we reach out to all the nations, the Arab nations, and offer them a hand of peace that even uses those terms, “we extend a hand of peace to our Arab neighbors,” and then “a hand of peace to Israeli Arabs, saying to them, please join in the building of this country, and as full citizens and full participants.” 

And so reading it made me realize that we don’t have articulated prayers for Israeli society. Okay, maybe the word peace, but what do we want? Not what we want in the war alone, but where do we want to go? What’s our prayer for the country? 

Now Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do have a prayer. They do have a vision. It involves, as you said, a isolationism and a destructive, I believe, ultra-nationalist, fascist vision, messianic vision for Israel, but they do have a vision. And part of our problem this Independence Day is that there isn’t even a discussion in Israel as to our counter vision. Who do we want to be? Netanyahu never speaks in terms of vision, but even Gantz and Lapid, don’t talk to the New York Times, talk to me.

Donniel: I was talking today to a group of rabbis, to 30 people who are getting ordination from the Institute, and I said, you know, in Israel, politicians are afraid of saying anything that might cause a person to not want to vote for them. So they just sort of, there’s this void. I said, we’re not politicians, you’re rabbis. Get out there. What’s your vision? And so this Independence Day, while I celebrate October 8th, October 8th, October 7th, 2023, but also specifically these last seven months poses for us a very serious question about, what are we dreaming about? What do we hope for? What do we hope, not “should we go into Rafiach or not.” Not even “should the hostages come back.” 

Larger dreams about what type of country we want to have. What type of people do we want to be? What type of future do we see? And so as I celebrate, I want to raise the discourse. We need to bring back prayer. Not praying to God, but praying in a sense of articulating a sense of vision. I don’t know if we need a new Declaration of Independence, but I think just like every generation has to tell its story, I think our generation has to retell the Declaration of Independence. So much has broken and so much has changed. I think we have to restate what is our vision, what’s our hope. It can’t just be, we’re gonna fight, we’re gonna defeat Hamas. And it’s just, that’s part of the chaos we’re in. 

And I’m hoping that this Independence Day will give us some strength. Because what we need, we need leadership, but we need leadership who has the courage to set forth a vision, which doesn’t just talk to people where they are, but which talks to people about where they might want to be and where they ought to go. And I’m feeling the void so deeply today. I’m feeling that void. And when there is that void, only the negative visions emerge. And the other ones who camp by in that vision are sort of just, we’re sinking. I think I want to give us a rope. And so I’m looking for prayer this Independence Day.

Yossi: I’m always for prayer and not only on Independence Day but I think that we’re in a moment of acute prayer. But what doesn’t resonate for me this year, and did in the past, was this notion that Independence Day needs to be consecrated to vision. I don’t think that I’m capable of rising to that this year. 

What I do aspire to this year is to remind myself of the need for gratitude. That’s the emotion that feels most resonant for me this year. To remember in the midst of everything that all of the problems that we’re going through, and they’re terrible problems, are still preferable to where we were 80 years ago. And here, this is my father speaking. This is what my father would say to you on Independence Day. And I’ll, you know, I remember something he said to me.

After the Munich massacre, 1972, when the Israeli Olympics team, virtually the whole team was wiped out. And my father said, you see, this is why we have a Jewish state. And I said, Dad, what are you talking about? In Germany, it’s all happening again. They just destroyed our whole team. He said, yeah, but look at what’s happening now in the world. The whole world is busy with the question, what are the Jews going to do now in response? He said, why? Because 20 Jews are killed in Germany? He said, 20 Jews were killed in Germany every five seconds. He said, now, now 20 Jews are killed from the Olympics team. The whole world is… 

So that was a very, that was very much of a survivor’s response. I’m looking at it from our generation and saying, you know, it’s not as primal as that. And that brings us back to October 8th. It is primal in terms of October 8th, but there’s something bigger to feel gratitude for and to feel gratitude for the fact that we’re able to grapple with our problems. We’re able to have responsibility for our problems. And our problems, Donniel, they’re ours. We created them. We have the responsibility and the ability to deal with them. 

So for me, the gratitude this year, it’s a little bit different from my father’s gratitude.

Donniel: I know. Yossi, I love you. Yossi, I need you in my life, but I don’t want to be you. 

Yossi: Sometimes I don’t want to be me either.

Donniel: Because of this, it’s, you know, again, like when I hear you, it’s like, okay, I realize the world of difference between you and your father, but I want to tell you in conclusion, Yossi, we have to get higher. 

I’m sitting here in Israel and I’m seeing not a rudderless society, I’m seeing a society that just doesn’t know how anymore to dream. There’s just, and we’re just, there’s the wrong dreams that are permeating and we’re not offering alternatives. And I don’t think we have the time. And I think we need to find that strength to reach higher. You can’t reach higher, I’m with you. I’m going to reach higher and I’m going to drive people crazy. And we have to start talking. 

The greatest defeat is to allow us for October 7th to be defining everything about us. And even in many ways, and even in many ways, the last hundred, the last 214 days, it’s there. It’s part of me. I want to go higher, whether we can or not.

Yossi: I agree with you. This is one of our recurring themes, and that is how much do we pay attention to where the Jewish people is at? And how much do we say, no, we need to put the vision before us no matter what. And I agree with you. Of course we have to go higher. But I also feel a deep need to respect where we are as a people at any given moment.

Donniel: We have no disagreement. You know, it’s precisely as chaos feels that it overcomes us that I think we have to stand up. And this year, next week we’re going to celebrate. And next week, we’re going to start dreaming. And let’s get back to the business of being a Jewish people.

Yossi, as always, it’s a pleasure to be with you. This is For Heaven’s Sake, Israel at War, day 214.

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